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Old 11-06-2016, 08:21 PM
Rosco65 Rosco65 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2016
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I bought some of the same stuff - WE 14ga off Ebay. I got caught up in Jeff's enthusiasm as well. 50 ft is not that bad. Makes a couple sets of cables.

I think many of us in this hobby have gotten caught up in what is "best" based on theory or expense. It really began in earnest in the 1980's (remember CD Stoplight?) and kept going since. It may very well turn out that boutique parts and esoteric materials (and speaker cables the size of garden hose) not only don't make things sound better they may actually sound worse.

A lot of the materials and techniques of the Golden Age and thousands of engineers and billions of dollars behind them. Things were chosen because they performed better and/or lasted longer, not because they could be sold as audio jewelry. If we look at the way a vintage McIntosh or Marantz (or Citation or Brook) amp was wired it may seem prosaic compared to today's megabuck amps, but as Jeff Day discovered, straying from the old components actually made things worse. I remember reading about the parts choices in my Superphon Revelation Preamp: Stan Warren had to hit a price point but also needed to make it sound great. He bought tons of a very cheap potentiometer and selected for linearity and matched sections. It significantly outperformed the fashionable Alps Blue Velvet in this particular application. It turns out that the combination of cheap parts worked for his design.
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